Giacomo Durazzo



Count Giacomo Durazzo (27 April 1717 – 15 October 1794) was an Italian diplomat and man of the theatre.

Biography
He was born into the House of Durazzo, one of the most important aristocratic families in Genoa. His older brother was the doge Marcello Durazzo. In 1749, he became ambassador to the court in Vienna, where he was appointed director of the imperial theatres in the city in 1754. He is most famous for working with the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck on reforming Italian opera.

In 1750, he married the eighteen-year-old Countess Ernestine Aloisia Ungnad von Weissenwolff (1732–1794). He died in Venice.